More on Second Life I must confess that the Saturday and Sunday work wasn't all Moodle admin! I finally escaped from Orientation Island, and joined the 'Kiwi Educators' group that meets in the NMIT Garden of Learning. It was a low-key affair, with some relaxing music and light conversation. I think I'll join this group again this coming Sunday, if at all possible! It seems that religion is also a Second Life phenomenon (no surprise really, but it is interesting to see how RL problems make it into the virtual world as well). I have enjoyed various SL locations over the last few days from time to time, and I am learning more about the potential for theological education. Also of interest is the possibility presented here. Imagine Second Life based on Real Life maps... the future will be an interesting one. As I suggested to some attendees of the SPABC conference on Thursday, when the graphics become photo-realistic and VoIP becomes a reality (already in progress) - and assuming that bandwidth increases - environments such as Second Life will be very viable for distance education. Of course, we should maximise the possibilities such an environment would provide (that is, we should do more than solely replicate the RL classroom) and build instead on the wonderful instructional design principles already developed, while injecting the rich potential of Web 2.0... which leads me to my next entry...
...Civilising the natives In 2001, Marc Prensky introduced us to a wonderful way of expressing what we all kind of knew but lacked the vocabulary to explain: our young students are growing up different (see PDF). Young people are digital natives; the best of us older folk who try to join them in the digital world are digital immigrants. Earlier this week on Sansblogue - see comments I ranted (sorry, Tim and AKMA!) about how we might treat digital natives and Web 2.0. A further article by Henry Jenkins (parts one and two, with thanks to Stephen of Greenflame) addresses the issue of what lessons Wikipedia has for us to do with digital natives; it can be used as a vehicle for teaching the all-too-important media literacy skills needed for Web 2.0-style interaction and learning. I am both excited by and hesitant to embrace Web 2.0; excited that Web 2.0 does indeed hold considerable educational promise, but hesitant if applying it reinforces the surface-level engagement that digital natives (speaking generally!) seem to have with information and knowledge. We need to be wise, informed pedagogues (and andragogues) who embrace Web 2.0 in a critical way, mindful of the learning strengths and opportunities that students bring to formal education. I see that Mary Hess, who I have come across already in my PhD reading, is confronting similar issues (see also her Spectrum work). I can't help thinking that there is more to be made of the issue of Web 2.0 and collaborative learning in higher education. Thanks also to Derek C who added his own thoughts on eFest, whcih kick-started my touchiness about this whole subject.
Blending in A PDF survey by The Sloan Consortium suggests that blended learning is not as big as online learning - but that there is considerable promise for further growth. I found this set of modes particularly interesting:
- A course/program that is primarily on-campus (web-facilitated)
- A totally on-campus course/program
- Totally online course/program
- Primarily online course/program (blended)
- A course/program that is equally balanced between online and on-campus (blended)
- A course/program by another form of distance learning (e.g. audio, video, CD-ROM)
The wetness of winter Well, it's certainly rainy in West Auckland at the moment. At least it's not windy!
1 comments:
Mark, you may be interested in this blog post I stumbled upon today:
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2007/06/web-20-the-sleep-of-reason-part-i/
A small quote:
"I know about this etching partly because I read about it decades ago and partly because I recently went to authoritative printed sources for confirmation of what I had read and for additional information and insights. These reference works were not only created by scholars and published by reputable publishers but also contained the paratextual elements (subject headings, indexes, bibliographies, content lists, etc.) also created by professionals that enabled me to find the recorded knowledge and information I wanted in seconds.
This small example typifies the difference between the print world of scholarly and educational publishing and the often-anarchic world of the Internet. The difference is in the authenticity and fixity of the former (that its creator is reputable and it is what it says it is), the expertise that has given it credibility, and the scholarly apparatus that makes the recorded knowledge accessible on the one hand and the lack of authenticity, expertise, and complex finding aids in the latter." - Michael Gorman
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